Why the Chickenpox Vaccine Matters
Most students at one North Carolina private school have not received the chickenpox vaccine, and the school is now the epicenter of the largest chickenpox outbreak in 20 years .
Several years before the vaccine was released, I had my own bout of itchy, scarring disease. If you’ve never had the fun, the main feature of chickenpox is the hundreds of incredibly itchy red bumps that turn into scabs. They itch so badly that you can’t scratch them. You are offered lotions and oatmeal baths. Nothing helps. You spend time thinking about the worst spots where stains could appear, and then you usually end up there as well. You don’t go to school for a week or two and you don’t like it at all.
I am not dead, but some children do die. Typically, in the early 1990s, 4 million children developed the disease, about 10,000 were so severe that they could be hospitalized, and between 100 and 150 died.
Serious complications can include skin infections, pneumonia, and brain inflammation, which can be serious enough to cause brain damage. Chickenpox can also harm a developing fetus by causing abnormalities in the brain, limbs, and eyes.
People at highest risk of complications include infants, people with compromised immune systems, adolescents, and adults. This means that if you do not give your child the chickenpox vaccine while he is still a child, it may be more difficult for him if he gets infected at an older age.
The chickenpox vaccine is part of the regular childhood immunization schedule and is cost-free under ACA-compatible health plans (which is almost all of them). So as long as your kids get their snapshots on schedule , they’ll probably be protected.